Photo by Erling Mandelman
Reading the novel & Sons by David Gilbert has me musing about one of my favorite literary techniques: the unreliable narrator.
The book follows the story of the famous but reclusive author A.N. Dyer, a seventy-nine year old self-described failure as a father who calls his estranged sons back home to New York City. The treat here, and what gives the novel its edge, is that the narrator is Philip Topping, son of A.N. Dyer’s oldest (and recently deceased) best friend. Philip literally and literally inserts himself into the lives of the Dyer family and tells us things that he has witnessed and that he may have heard secondhand, and then proceeds to relay with conviction what he cannot possibly know: the inner thoughts, feelings, and intimate histories of Dyer the author, his sons, and even his ex-wife. Topping is actually upfront about it, suggesting early on that he’s guilty of “narrative fraud.”
But what is his agenda? Halfway through he’s already dropped more than a few hints and clues, but I’m eagerly anticipating a fuller picture by book’s end.
So what about this idea of unreliable narrators? A story is already a lie in a way, and an unreliable narrator suggests another (I wager more profound) layer of deceit. I love the notion that as readers when we open a book we automatically go along with the fiction, the lie, that this story is “true” in the context of the world the author has created. The trust between reader and writer is inherent. But what happens when the narrator-character telling the story does something that makes us question the validity of the tale? That unsettling feeling we’re in shifty hands. Alert, the author says, we’re going to have to be sharp here.
Unlike & Sons an unreliable narrator often takes his time in giving himself away, revealing his ultimate aim. He’s usually betrayed by what he focuses on. Particular observations, attention to certain details, contradictions, a snowball’s effect of slip-ups that show us he is not who we first thought, that events have been tailored to show himself in a favorable (sympathetic) light. This is what I’m going after in my own novel.
It’s an approach that is definitely not for everybody. But it excites and engages another level of my reading brain. I like the challenge, the hunt, the tangle with a character who is troubled and possibly a danger to himself and others. Why else does a character craft his own reality but to disguise his pathologies?
So what about you, fellow reader? Do you prefer your literature more conventional, or do you go for something more elusive now and then?
In a post last week I asked what you wanted from this blog, and a few of you were kind enough to answer. To St. Tracy, my first responder, I must say I’m still interviewing potential candidates to serve as both maid and cook for your household so you’ll have more free time to frequent my website. The next qualifying round is a cat-juggling contest, an underrated skill I know you value highly in your domestic workers.
